He nodded in the direction of Josh’s glass.
His glass filled for the third time, Josh looked at Donald Herbert anxiously. ‘But I don’t want you to think I’m not enjoying it and I do know how lucky I am to be there at all, and I know I have you partly to thank for it –’
‘Well, only partly. Your cuttings from the Western Morning News were pretty impressive. All I did was make sure Bedford read them, and gave you a chance. I’ll see what I can do, try and find you a story from the inside track. We’re going to lose this next election, that’s for sure. So there’ll be plenty of material in that. Meanwhile, just keep your head down and do what Bedford tells you. Even if you don’t want to do it. Only way to learn.’
‘I know. Actually, I’ve got one to do tomorrow. About the Festival of Britain. More of a feature really, nothing political, and personally I think the place is a bit depressing, but apparently Campbell’s keen on covering it and told Bedford to get on with it.’
‘Right, well, good luck with that. Look, I must go. I have a company to run, keep forgetting about it …’
He hadn’t forgotten about it, of course; he never did for an instant, Josh thought, looking after his large figure as he made his way out to the Strand. He was currently regarded as a possible, if not probable, elevation to the House of Lords at the end of the present parliament and Josh knew he was lucky to have him as a mentor; he also really liked him. He had met him at the Curtis household, at one of their evening soirées.
Thinking of them reminded him of the news about Jillie’s engagement. There was to be a party shortly to celebrate; and he had been invited. He was very fond of Jillie, hoped the Welles fellow was worthy of her. He must contact her and congratulate her. He wondered if she’d give up her medical studies; shame if she did. There were precious few married women working; most men demanded – and got – one hundred per cent attention to themselves. Well, if he was ever lucky enough to find a wife, he’d let her do whatever she liked. The women’s editor on the News, Philippa Parry, was a great champion of women’s rights and commissioned many stories supporting this view. She always got a huge postbag from frustrated housewives after one of these. ‘But then the poor things just go back to their washing,’ she said to Josh one day, as they waited for the evening conference. ‘It’s such a slow battle. I thought the war would have done it, but they’ve all just slipped backwards into the kitchen. Or rather been driven there.’
She liked Josh; she found him amusing and liberal minded, not to mention rather attractive. She wished he could get more stories into the paper, but that was a slow battle too; it had taken years of fashion reporting of the most basic kind before she had finally gained any kind of authority. And that was entirely due to Harry Campbell, who had worked with her years earlier, and when a slot came up on the News, he called her in.
‘I want a lot more than reports on frocks and the height of heels,’ he said. ‘I want the women’s pages to be like the rest of the paper: a strong statement of what we stand for. Which means giving women a voice, so they can express their concerns and ambitions. Delivering that is all you have to do.’
Twenty-four hours later, Josh was stationed by the entrance of the Exhibition on the newly glamorised South Bank. With him were John Booth, photographer; Joanna Biggs, fashion reporter; and Donald Herbert, who had been lunching at the Savoy with Harry Campbell and found himself suddenly dispatched in the middle of a superb fillet of beef to ‘keep an eye on this shoot at the Festival. Nobody senior there and I’m not entirely happy about it. Your protégé’s going, young Tom Knelston, and he’ll be glad to see you.’ As indeed Tom was.
Tom was interested in the Festival of Britain only in as far as it was known to be the brainchild of Attlee and another of his bids to cheer the nation up. He was fascinated by such public-relations enterprises. So far it had been a success, and this being a blessedly sunny warm day, it was already busy. They were all clutching copies of the South Bank Exhibition Guide with its jaunty logo incorporating Britannia, and a row of red, white and blue flags, designed at considerable cost. The two most famous segments of the exhibition (timed to coincide with the centenary of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition) were the Dome of Discovery which contained a series of exhibitions on such worthy subjects as the Land, the Earth and the Sea, and the Skylon, a slender steel needle-like construction almost 300 feet high. And the new Royal Festival Hall, acoustically perfect, it was said, and already booked to host the world’s finest musicians for months and even years ahead.
Gerald Barry, the festival’s director, had described the whole thing as a ‘tonic for the nation’, and while it perhaps lacked the sparkle normally associated with tonic, being for the most part grey and constructed in concrete, the nation, or such of it as spoke to Josh Curtis, seemed of a mind to agree with him. After two hours things became repetitive; there were, as Donald Herbert remarked, only so many ways for people to admire it, and was there nothing more exciting for Joanna to write about than the British uniform for outings of overcoat, hat, gloves, umbrella and nicely polished shoes?
Then Donald Herbert had the idea, which not only transformed the feature and the photographs, but propelled Joanna’s byline into sixteen-point, and tipped Tom Knelston’s comparatively ordered life into potential disarray for years to come.
‘What we should do,’ he said, ‘is head down to Battersea, to the Pleasure Gardens. Bet we’ll get a jollier crowd there.’
He was right: the Festival Pleasure Gardens, opened by Princess Margaret, were filled with people in much more holiday mood. A glorified funfair, it had attracted much controversy, felt to be not in keeping with the more serious purpose of the festival. There was particular criticism of the fact that it was open on Sundays. However, the public were determined to enjoy it, and indeed it much more closely resembled the tonic described by Gerald Barry than its more earnest neighbour up river. Its centrepiece was the big wheel and the queue to ride upon it extremely long. The inhabitants of the queue that day were young and, greatly to Joanna Biggs’s relief, more interestingly dressed, many of the young in jeans and that new phenomenon, the overgrown sweatshirt known as a ‘sloppy joe’, munching contentedly on toffee apples and candyfloss as they waited. Girls giggled and boys postured for John Booth’s camera, flashing tirelessly into the evening light; Joanna became increasingly inventive, pulling boys’ hats off and plonking them onto their girlfriends’ heads, and Donald Herbert, feeling his work done, was emboldened to pull out the whisky flask he kept permanently in his pocket and take increasingly frequent sips of it. They were all beginning to feel they had done their job when there was a sudden cry of ‘Tom! Tom Knelston, hello!’ and they all turned round to see a beautiful girl, tall, dark, aristocratic, wearing what only Donald Herbert could say for sure was mink, and extremely high-heeled shoes, waving at them from the hot dog stall.
The wave was followed by some imperious beckoning; obediently, they trooped towards her, Herbert looking at Tom with an entirely new expression on his face, veering between awe and irritation, and as they reached the stall another woman, also be-minked and high-heeled, came towards them holding out a gracious hand.
‘Do come over. How marvellous, just as we were giving up. My name is Blanche Ellis Brown from Style magazine.’ It really was too good to be true, Donald thought. ‘We’ve been shooting all afternoon. The other girl’s gone, but we wanted one last shot of Diana here, on the big wheel, or possibly the carousel, and needed a good-looking man to be beside her. Precious few of those here, I can tell you, but – well, you wouldn’t mind, would you?’ She addressed her remark to Tom, although Donald Herbert, Josh Curtis and even John Booth were all beaming hopefully at her. It wasn’t until she said, ‘Diana tells me you are old friends,’ that they were forced to realise it was Tom she was actually addressing.
Tom could only smile sheepishly and submit to having his raincoat removed by Joanna, who was beside herself with excitement. A study of his cheap suit saw the jacket of that removed as well, his t
ie loosened, his top shirt button undone and he was set beside Diana on a carousel horse smiling uncertainly into Booth’s camera. The proprietor of the carousel, who knew a publicity opportunity when he saw one, stopped and started it as often as required. Diana, a seasoned practitioner of the photo shoot, took command, and the final shot had Diana and Tom on the same horse, Diana side-saddle, her face turned to Tom and both of them laughing.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Blanche, as they finally scrambled off. ‘Yes, please do use the pictures, as long as you credit Style. Thank you so much, Mr Knelston – you should get someone to sign you up, you’re a natural. Diana, what are you going to do now, darling? I have to get back to the office, get those coats locked up for the night, and that diamond bracelet and earrings, if you don’t mind.’
‘Pity, I was going to try and make off with them,’ said Diana. ‘Where’s the car? All my stuff’s in it. Look, Tom and the rest of you, why don’t we go for a drink, we’re so near the Savoy.’
‘Marvellous idea,’ said Donald Herbert. ‘I was having lunch there several hours ago, before the editor sent me off here. I can pick up where I left off. Halfway through a bottle of rather nice claret, I seem to remember.’
‘And you are?’ said Diana, studying him with interest.
Thus it was that twenty minutes later, Tom found himself in the cocktail bar at the Savoy. He had a vague, uneasy feeling that he should have been somewhere else, doing something much more worthy, but he really couldn’t remember what. Since all that mattered was that Alice was on duty, he should just try to enjoy it. Which he was. Very much. As he sat there, watching Diana, waving for the waiter, ordering champagne, taking in the surroundings, which were scarcely familiar in themselves, but which induced a sensation he could recognise from being in Jillie’s house – and even, he reflected with some surprise, being in the Southcott house with its glorious warmth that freezing day surrounded by books – he settled back in his chair, took the champagne from the tray the waiter was offering him and surrendered to – what? A sort of rich pleasure, a sense that this was quality in its purest sense, and that while this was not where he belonged, he had reached it and not without some difficulty, and having the ability to recognise that, he had every right to enjoy it.
So he sat there in the bar, smiling at Diana who was unmistakably happy to be there with him. Delighted to be able – just for once – to be in command of the situation, sipping at champagne and feeling neither overawed nor uncomfortable but easy and able to enjoy the whole, surprising experience in a totally unsurprised way.
The picture of him and Diana in the Daily News the following morning, taking up a large part of the third page, aroused a variety of emotions in a variety of people. It was the main feature story in the paper that day: the rest of the page and the one opposite showed a number of smaller photographs, including one of Donald Herbert eating candyfloss. Diana was described by Josh in his caption as top model Diana Southcott (she had agreed with Johnathan at the beginning that she would be known by her maiden name) and he as rising star of the Labour Party, Tom Knelston (Tom had agreed to this wild overstatement after his third glass of champagne, urged on by Donald Herbert and Diana). Harry Campbell, the editor of the Daily News, was delighted as he was able to show Jarvis McIntyre, his ultimate boss, that he had done what he asked and made a splash of the festival; Donald Herbert was gratified at doing what he had been looking for an opportunity to do for a long time and bring Tom to the public’s attention; Blanche Ellis Brown was thrilled at the pre-publicity for one of her fashion pages, and her new top model discovery; Diana Southcott was extremely pleased with herself, not only for getting some personal publicity but for finding a reason to claim Tom Knelston as more than just a childhood acquaintance; Tom Knelston was deeply embarrassed and anxious about Alice’s reaction, and to a lesser degree that of the local Labour MP and indeed the party chairman. His apprehension about Alice’s reaction was correct; she was so angry on reading the article, brought to her notice by several of her colleagues, that she had to go into the sluice and throw several bowls of water at the wall, before rehearsing word for word what she would have to say to Tom when she saw him that evening; words delivered with such vitriol in the hallway of the nurses’ home where he was waiting for her with a rather weary-looking bunch of daffodils that he felt them like physical blows, her nurse’s cap hurled onto the floor and the daffodils with them.
‘I thought you didn’t want to go to that “thing”, as you called it. So what changed? Some fancy posh bird in a fur coat? I wonder how your beloved party would view that? I thought you were a socialist, Tom Knelston. All over, is it, now you’re hobnobbing with top models? How did you meet her anyway? Just happened to bump into her? As you wandered through the park? All by yourself. Or were you with your loud, vulgar friend Donald Herbert? I never could see the attraction of that man, Tom. He’s just – gross. Well, you’re very welcome to the whole disgusting lot of them. I just wonder what Laura might have had to say about it? You could at least have warned me, but I don’t suppose you care enough about me to even consider that. Well, never mind. I never want to see you again, Tom Knelston, as long as I live. So you can just get out of here and go and find Miss Southcott. Only if she’s got any sense, she won’t waste her time on someone like you. Do you think she’ll sit for hours listening to your boring speeches, or your ambitions for the National Health Service? I very much doubt it. I don’t suppose she’s been near a public hospital in her entire life. Now just get out of here, and –’ she was crying now, the tears somehow increasing the force of her rage – ‘don’t touch me, just don’t, stop it, Tom, stop it, I hate you, or I would if I didn’t despise you. What are you—’
For Tom, standing there, initially meek and apologetic, had slowly, in the face of this onslaught, become overwhelmed with a quite different emotion, one of intense and quite shocking desire for her. He had never seen this Alice before: passionate, raw, careless of what she was saying. The sweet, submissive girl had, as he watched and listened to her, become a woman, strong, brave, honest, fighting for what she had and what mattered to her. He raised his voice above hers and said, ‘Alice, stop it. Stop it now, at once. You’re being stupid. And I—’
‘Oh really? Stupid? No one’s ever complained about it before.’
‘Well, perhaps they should have done. Perhaps you’d have grown up a bit. Instead of going around thinking you’re perfect, doing so well at that expensive school, and at your nursing, and your parents …’
That did it; she went for him, physically, lunged at him, slapped his face, pummelled his chest, screaming that she hated him. Suddenly he caught her wrists and held her off and – what was he doing now? Smiling, for heaven’s sake, smiling and then half laughing. She lashed out with the only weapons she had left, her feet, and kicked him in the shins.
‘Don’t laugh at me!’ she said. ‘Laura might have been perfect, but I tell you what, Tom Knelston, you most certainly aren’t. You’re arrogant and quite often boring and rude and—’
‘Laura always said my mother should have put me over her knee more often. Said she spoilt me. You seem to be in agreement with her over that at least.’ He rubbed his ankle, grimacing. ‘That quite hurt, you know.’
Alice stood back, breathing heavily. ‘Good, I meant it to. And yes, I think Laura was right.’
They stood there, the pair of them, six inches apart now, their eyes fixed on one another. Then suddenly, Tom reached for Alice’s hand, and with his other hand very gently stroked her cheek. ‘I was just wondering if you might consider marrying me? Arrogant, boring and rude as I am?’
‘Marry you?’
‘Yes. Marry me.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, my goodness. Oh, gosh. Crikey. Crumbs.’
‘Is that a posh way of saying yes?’
‘Look, I just want to get one thing out of the way. This obsession with class that you have is so tedious. I can’t help being born into whatever class it was. Nor
can you. So can we just stop talking about it, for ever?’
‘For ever is a very long time. But for a bit yes, of course. And having got that out of the way, what is your answer?’
‘What do you think it is, you rude arrogant, boring, incredibly lovely man?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me.’
‘It’s yes, of course. Yes, yes, yes!’
Alice looked at him. He was smiling. She realised that he had become someone different. Someone more confident, less confused. Which was exactly how he felt, although he couldn’t have told anyone why.
‘Now,’ he said, and she took the hand he held out to her. ‘We’re going to get a taxi – yes, not wait for a bus, the way most people have to do, because we aren’t most people; we’re privileged, thank God – and get the hell over to Islington, and if you don’t come then you really never will see me again.’
An hour later they were in Tom’s mercifully recently changed bed; Alice had been duly deflowered and while not entirely enjoying it, could see the huge potential of it at least and she had agreed, in a rather quavery voice, that they should marry in the fairly near future.
‘Very near if I’m pregnant,’ she added, with a hiccup. ‘But Tom, are you sure about all this? It’s a bit sudden. You’re not going to change your mind, are you?’
‘No. I’m not going to change my mind. And it’s not really sudden. I’m a bit thick, that’s all. I couldn’t see how much I loved you.’
‘I still don’t quite understand.’
‘You don’t need to.’
And with that Alice had to be, if not content, at least fully persuaded, and was very happy to be so.
Chapter 24
1951
Tom’s enthusiasm for the June wedding, so yearned after by both Alice and her mother – a mere two months after the announcement of the engagement – was something of a surprise as well as a relief to both of them. Alice quite simply couldn’t wait to become Mrs Knelston and to commence her role by wafting down the aisle on her father’s arm in a dress and veil as much like those featured in the pages of wedding magazines as possible. June was the month to be married, everybody knew that; warm, sunny, with gardens at their rose-filled, lush-lawned best. It was also perfect for honeymoons, ideally in a seaside location. Mrs Miller did have a slight anxiety that it might look just a little too hasty, as if Alice might have something to hide beneath the bouquet, but a rather embarrassing conversation reassured her on that score. Although when the wedding date actually had to be set for the middle of July, the church being so fully booked through June, it came as something of a relief.
A Question of Trust Page 25